


Hold Me

by MnemonicMadness



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet Ending, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Civil War Team Iron Man, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tissue Warning, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony dies in siberia, Vengeful Pepper, can be read as friendship or relationship, not compliant with the ending of CW, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:11:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13495614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MnemonicMadness/pseuds/MnemonicMadness
Summary: Tony dies in Siberia and Pepper is left to cope with a world that is missing an important piece. Though perhaps, they can still help each other find peace.





	Hold Me

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by Hellblazer issue 27 (also called Hold Me). There is no need at all to be familiar with Hellblazer in any way, but if you like gritty comics, I can highly recommend it!
> 
> Disclaimer: The only thing I own are the typos.

The wind is howling outside, loud enough to be almost deafening to him now, so loud he can barely hear his own thoughts and really, that's just kinda rude. Was it this loud the whole time and he just didn't notice? Then again, he can't really think anyway, his minds feels sluggish now, frozen. He wants to shake his head at the sudden image of ice crystals forming in between neurons. He can't. Maybe his head has frozen to the ground? It's definitely cold enough.

He can't speak either. Hasn't been able to in a while now, he tried. But that's okay, he tells himself. His suit probably won't continue to record anything anyway, the backup power for the tracking signal crapped out a while ago too – he isn't even sure if the tracking signal got through, the howling outside sounds like a blizzard so it probably hasn't, or he wouldn't still be alone.

His lips hurt, or rather they _did_ , now he can't really feel them anymore. But before, it felt a bit like blood and spittle was freezing between them while he was speaking, pricking his lips like little ice needles. It's okay, he repeats to himself silently. There is so much he still wants to say, so many things he wants so many people to know, but he can't anymore and even if he could, he knows he's running out of time, fast. Doesn't matter. He said as much as he could and managed for once not to let his lack of brain-to-mouth filter take over. Well, not too much anyway.

Now he waits in silence. Cold. A part of him wishes he could turn, curl up into a fetal position, maybe that'd be a little warmer, but the dead suit doesn't let him. Which, as his rationality tells him, is a good thing because with several ribs and his previously already weakened sternum shattered, that wouldn't be a good idea at all. Even if it might make him a bit warmer.

Hell, even the blood running out of him and into his suit doesn't feel warm anymore. For a while there, its warmth was morbidly comforting. Maybe there just isn't enough left by now so what little it still trickling out is cooled too soon after it leaves his body. Hm. Or maybe it's just his skin going numb. Honestly, he's starting to have trouble telling where his body ends and the cold begins, that's how deep the cold's seeped into him. Feels like there's ice being pumped sluggishly through his veins. So many people always did think he was cold hearted after all. Hehe.

Pep never thought so. Nor did Rhodey. He suddenly misses them with an ache even worse than when Cap's shield first cut deep into his chest cavity. He wants to thank them again for being by his side all those years, putting up with all his shit unfazed. He'd like to do so in person, but he knows with absolute certainty by now that he'll never have that opportunity again, he probably has only minutes left now. He'd have a slim chance of survival if there was a rescue team coming right this second, but he's pretty sure he would've heard that even over the howling of the wind. Maybe once it's over, it won't be as cold anymore.

Honestly, he doesn't really care if he lives or dies now. Even the thought of living through this and having to handle the inevitable shitstorm that'll come after makes him tired. Even more tired than he already feels. Or maybe that's the blood loss. So yeah, survival, meh. All he's wishing right now is that he wasn't alone. And not so cold.

Seeing Rhodey or Pepper right now would be nice. Maybe they'd give him a hug, a nice, warm hug. Like Rhodey gave him in the Afghan desert, though he hadn't needed it for warmth then. He thinks of Pepper, her slim, elegant but surprisingly strong arms around him, the way she always feels so warm in his, body temperature running a little higher ever since Extremis. Yeah, a Pepper-hug, that'd be nice right about now.

It's a good thing to think about, he decides. He's dying. There is still so much guilt, so many mistakes to fix and to atone for, even more now after this shitfest, but he shoves that aside. He's dying, he's earned a little break to think about nice things. He's well aware he isn't a saint, never has been, but even he deserves to try and be a little less miserable than he could be when he's dying. He does deserve that, doesn't he? Right?

Pepper-hugs it is. He rebuilds the memories like a cocoon around his tired mind, with as much detail as possible. How solid and warm she'd feel. How he would hide his face in the crook of her neck, in her silky, beautiful hair. How he'd breathe in slowly because she even _smells_ warm. How she would cup the back of his head gently – where it currently feels frozen to the ground – and how he wouldn't be able to see it, but could tell anyway that she's smiling. A warm smile, fond and a little amused, the one for _him_.

He misses her. It's so cold. Outside, the wind changes direction for a moment, blowing a new gust of ice crystals towards where he lies. They glitter in the air for a moment. _Beautiful_ , he thinks, and wonders if Pepper would think so as well. He can't decide on an answer. Can't think clearly enough. If only it weren't so cold...

* * *

_There is... something. What, he doesn't know. Noise. Something warm._

_He wants to reach out, touch the warm. Wants to ask it to stay with him. He can't._

_Something takes him away, except it doesn't and he stays behind when the warm goes away, no matter how much he wants to follow._

_Then the warm is gone and there's only cold._

* * *

It's been 64 hours without news and Pepper feels like she could go out of her skin with restlessness. Tony is missing and there's nothing she can do but wait, wait for FRIDAY to track the signal that got lost somewhere in Russia. Wait for something, anything to tell her where to look, how to get Tony back.

Next to her, Rhodey – in his hospital bed, awake right now but drifting in and out of consciousness due to the strong painkillers he is on despite his initial protests – seems to be vibrating with the same restlessness.

She is exhausted, only having had cat-naps in the past 64 hours and she can perfectly imagine the shit-eating grin Tony would give her now, no doubt remembering all the times she rightfully scolded him for his terrible sleeping habits. The same shit-eating grin he uses to hide how worried he is. And god, how much she wishes she could see that grin right now.

She started praying about 30 hours ago. She just feels so _helpless_ , sitting here, doing nothing but wait and pray and miss him and she knows without needing to look at James that he feels the same way. It's like Afghanistan all over again, though possibly even worse than that for James since then, he'd been able to actively look for Tony instead of being confined to a hospital bed.

Then finally, after 64 agonising hours, FRIDAY speaks.

“Miss Potts? I think I have Boss' location by now. Tracking took so long because of a blizzard in the area, and the signal's gone out a while ago.”

God, the AI sounds so young and scared, a child worrying over her parent.

“Blizzard? Where is he?” _Tony, what have you gotten yourself into now. Whatever it is, just please be alright._

Rhodey nods at her to go. “Call me.” he says. “Keep me updated.”

* * *

He isn't alright. She's been staring at the figure for an undefinable amount of time now, red and gold of the suit scratched and looking dull underneath the fern frost that covers it. Her mind can't seem to catch up to what her eyes are seeing, can't seem to _comprehend_.

She staggers over to him in a trance. Maybe in another situation she would have been glad for the cushioning her thick thermo pants provide as she falls to her knees next to him, probably bruising them. The air is bitingly cold when she rips one glove off. She doesn't notice either.

“ _Tony..._ ” escapes her in a broken whisper.

The only thing that seems to exist is his soft, soft messy hair where she touches it, carding her fingers through it so gently as if Tony might shatter under her touch. No, not Tony. Tony's _body_. Because this isn't Tony. Whatever happened to him, however much he had to suffer and struggle through, there had always been something so incredibly _vibrant_ to him. Tony Stark is the most alive person she has even known.

 _Was_. Because the still form she finds herself crouched over couldn't possibly be any less still, any less _Tony_.

But the hair undeniably feels like Tony's, and the eyes, his beautiful, warm brown eyes... They look dull now, even against the bluish-white death pallor of his skin, half-open, staring emptily towards the entrance Pepper and and the team of SI technicians and emergency medics came through, as if waiting for them. He probably was.

She reaches out to close his eyes, but she can't. His skin is solid underneath her hands. Frozen. One corner of his lips is quirked upwards a bit, into a tiny, wry, sad little smile, frozen there into place. She can't stop staring, can't stop caressing his hair.

It's when she sees the tears, _his tears_ , frozen against his temples, that she breaks.

After a while, the people around her she has long stopped being aware of simply begin to work around her in silence, letting her sob against him, her forehead leaning against his cold one until her tears freeze against his skin next to his own.

* * *

She doesn't call James when they're finally on the way back, to bring Tony home. She can't even think about it, can't think of anything other than her hand still tangled in Tony's hair. She wanted to take his hand – suit or no – but someone told her the metal was too cold, it would burn her. After she finally registered the words, it simply seemed like too much effort to take the step to Tony's side. She just keeps caressing his hair.

Someone must have informed James though, since the next time she sees him, still in the hospital, his eyes are as red-rimmed and empty as her own. He wordlessly holds out his arms for her and she steps up to him silently. They hold each other for hours.

* * *

Pepper is going through the motions. Organises the funeral. A big, public memorial with hundred thousands in attendance, millions grieving all around the world, but the funeral itself is a small affair. There are preciously few people, family only, only the few people who have the privilege of having truly known and loved Tony Stark.

Herself, Rhodey, Happy. Rhodey's mother, who sobs with the devastation of a mother who lost her son, because Tony was hers as much as James is. Peter and May Parker. Laura Barton and her children, who adored their Uncle Tony despite their father's disapproval, their eyes wide and innocent, not quite comprehending that Tony is gone. Vision and the bots, and FRIDAY via a StarkPad, because Tony would never have forgiven them if his children couldn't say goodbye. The Keener family.

The sermon is kept short in favour of playing the recording they'd discovered Tony made while he was dying in Siberia. His voice fills the church, interrupted by coughs and filled with pain, but still so warm and gentle and loving, and she can hear the smile he must have been forcing onto his face, because that's who Tony has always been. Comforting his loved ones even while he himself suffers.

He's laid to rest between Maria and Edwin Jarvis, instead of next to Howard as his father had originally intended when he'd bought the Stark family plot.

Afterwards, once the kids have finally gone to bed in various Stark Tower guest bedrooms, Pepper goes up to the penthouse and retrieves the single bottle of Tony's favourite whiskey from the kitchen counter. He kept it there once he went sober as a reminder to stay that way.

She opens it now, filling each of the adults two fingers' width and raising her glass.

“To Tony.” Her voice is shaking.

* * *

SI's stocks plummet at first in the weeks Tony's death was the only thing the world talked about. Soon after, they begin rising again. She still feels numb, has, ever since Siberia, ever since she lost Tony. In her role as CEO she is more ruthless than ever, though even that ruthlessness is nothing compared to what she shows when FRIDAY finally locates the Ex-Avengers. The people who _murdered Tony_. Who hurt him, over and over again even long before that.

The image of Tony's blood covering Captain America's shield, the deep gash in the chest of the suit, the sight of what the human chest underneath had looked like is burned into her mind. She doesn't shove it away. Rogers flinches when he meets her eyes after stepping into the court room. She is going to rain hellfire down on all of them.

Tony probably would have forgiven them and blamed himself for their actions. Tony would have helped them even after they betrayed him, would have sent his lawyers there in defence, instead of for the prosecution. But Pepper isn't Tony, she isn't even a fraction as good a person as Tony was. Tony is gone, and with him, so is a large part of her capacity for mercy, especially these days when cold burning rage is all that cuts through the numbness she feels. Fills the empty place inside here, where the part of her heart that belonged to Tony is gone, ripped away.

So when they get the harshest possible sentencing, she smiles coldly. And when the news reaches her that apparently, a number of supervillains with grudges against the Ex-Avengers had somehow managed to enter their cells, she doesn't pity them.

It won't come back to bite her, FRIDAY assured her there would be no traces left in the super max.' computer system. James looks up at her knowingly from his wheelchair, an expression of grim satisfaction on his face, matching hers.

* * *

The public decides to put up a statue and Pepper signs a small plot of land directly in front of Stark Tower over for it. The statue is surprisingly life-like in detail, but large and tacky and Tony would have been _delighted_. She imagines what his face would look like if he could see it and for the first time in months, she smiles, shaky but genuine.

* * *

 _Thank god for make-up_ , she thinks as she covers up the deep, dark rings underneath her eyes. She can't sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. Every time she closes her eyes, she dreams she is back in that Siberian bunker, alone and cold, having to find Tony before time runs out for him but she's _lost_ , she just can't seem to find him and if she doesn't he will die...

That morning, the moment she arrives at her office she picks up the phone and half an hour later, she has purchased the building from the Russian government and hired a demolition crew.

Two days later, the demolition company wires the down payment back to her without explanation, so she hires another company. Her money is returned the next day. After the fourth, where one of the workers suffers an unexplained heart-attack – luckily non fatal – no other crew will take the job no matter how much money she offers them and she sighs resignedly. Perhaps she should simply get herself a therapist instead.

* * *

_Cold is all that surrounds him. Endless, timeless cold._

_Then suddenly, there, warm. Warm like the day he was taken away, but wasn't. He tries to reach out again, tries to speak, but the warm flees when he does._

_Leaving him to the cold._

_Warm again. He can't help but be drawn to it._

_Back to cold. Twice more, then just cold. Only ever cold. Why won't the warm stay?_

* * *

“You know,” she speaks into the empty lab – Tony's personal one, the one the bots clean but everyone leaves untouched otherwise, the one she rarely enters, only when she really needs to feel close to him – “there is a rumour that the bunker where you... that the bunker in Siberia is haunted.”

It's Harley who told her about the rumour – urban legend by now – one night in the communal kitchen, where they had run into one another when they both couldn't sleep. The Keeners moved into the tower shortly after the funeral. Pepper will remain CEO of SI and also manages it until Harley turns 18 and can take official ownership of the company. It was a good choice of Tony to leave SI to Harley. In some ways, the boy is so much like Tony it makes her heart ache, and she knows he misses his father figure as fiercely as she misses him too.

He told her he stumbled across the rumour a few weeks ago, after he overheard her telling James about the issues with finding a demolition company to take care of the bunker.

Ever since then she is keeping an eye out for more information, and the accounts are all similar but vague. Something is moving in the shadows of the building, making noise as if attempting to speak, reaching out with cold hands. She thinks Tony would have found people's conviction that he is haunting the place hilarious.

And yet, she can't quite shake the feeling that there may be a kernel of truth in this particular urban legend. Stranger things have happened, Pepper knows that better than most.

* * *

She has been hesitant to do so, but when she finally broaches the topic with her therapist, she feels strangely relieved. They talk about it for several sessions, until he advises her to visit the site, so she can gain some closure. When she consults Doctor Strange regarding the matter, he tells her it's not beyond the realm of possibility. That spirits, especially those who died a violent death, can sometimes become stuck between the veils of the worlds, tethered to the world of the living by a memory or sensation strongly present in the moment they passed. She _will_ go, she decides.

* * *

Tony has been... gone for nearly half a year now, when she returns to where she found him. It isn't warm, precisely, but at least the temperatures are above freezing. Instead of taking a helicopter like last time, she decided to hire someone to drive her near the site, so she can walk a little more than the last mile on her own. Her breath fogs the air, air that is clear and refreshing, rather than biting. She feels better, freer than she has ever since she arrived here months ago.

She steps through the same entrance as she did when she came to find Tony. The building itself is significantly colder than the tundra outside, the thick concrete keeping the temperature somewhat level. Even in the dim light, she can make out the scuff marks of the fight that had taken place before Rogers killed him. There is still a stain on the floor where Tony had been, the concrete discoloured by something dark, rusty red.

She wishes there would have been a way to get her hands on Rogers personally. Even after she had FRIDAY mess with the security systems of the maximum security prison... It feels to her like Rogers and his loyal dogs have gotten off too easy, considering everything they have done over the years.

Slowly, she steps deeper into the building, the cold getting worse with every step. It is desolate, the only sounds are those of her footsteps, her breath and the wind outside. She is alone.

And then, she sees it. A movement in the shadows, something akin to fog or smoke shifting, just barely within her field of vision. And then there's a noise, and perhaps it is merely her imagination running wild, but it sounds like that little sniff Tony always makes when he's trying not to show that he is upset, and it breaks her hear anew. She follows the soft sound deeper into the bunker, and now, fog and shadows seem to swirl around her.

“Tony?” she calls out tentatively. “Tony? It's alright. It's me, Pepper.”

A hitched breath from her side, and something is touching the back of her hand. She whirls around and there it is, a hand reaching from the shadows for hers. It looks strangely blurred around the edges, not quite in full colour, not quite solid, but she would always recognise those callouses and scars, and carefully, she wraps both her hands around Tony's.

It takes several moments, but a shape begins to form as if peeling itself out of the shadows. Messy hair and dark flight suit, a deep gash in his chest and large, dull brown eyes. They look dazes and unfocussed and there's a small frown on Tony's face. He looks confused, upset and afraid, and his voice is shaking.

“P-please. Cold. I... I... Please, I'm so c-cold. Please, j-just... Just. Hold me.”

There shouldn't be anything left of her heart to break now, yet she can feel it shatter all over again as she carefully draws him close and into her arms. He doesn't feel quite solid, as if he isn't really there, and yet he undeniably _is_. She feels him shiver. “Oh Tony.”

She could spend eternity like this, she decides. Even if Tony is undeniably not alive, he is _there_ , and something painful inside her seems to finally untangle as the air around them inexplicably warms. Time flies by, she is unaware how much before he pulls back just enough to look at her, and he seems so much more real now. Finally, his eyes focus, the usual, sharp intelligence returning to his gaze.

“Pep?” he asks softly, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

She can only nod and pull him into another hug as tightly as she dares, hot tears running down her cheeks. He wipes them away when he pulls back again.

“It's okay, Pepper. I... I just couldn't get away from the _cold_ , but you fixed it. Knew I could always count on you.”

“I missed you. So much.”

Gently, he strokes her hair behind her ear. “Really? Even though my will ensured you didn't have to go job hunting this time?” he teases.

She can't help it, she laughs, watery and overwhelmed. “What can I say, without all the PR nightmares, I have too much free time on my hands.”

He smiles at her then, warm and beautiful and a bit melancholic, and it seems as though the strange blurriness is getting stronger. He won't be able to stay, she realises, and as much as she selfishly wishes he could, there is not a single person who has earned their peace as much as Tony Stark, so she smiles back.

“That's my Pep. It'll be okay, you know. You're the strongest person I've ever met. You'll be okay. Just... don't ever forget that I love you. And give everyone else my love too, okay?”

“I love you too, Tony, and I promise. Will that be all, Mr Stark?”

That makes him chuckle, a sound much happier and freer than it had been for so long while he was alive, and it warms her very soul.

“That will be all, Ms Potts.” He is fading visibly faster now, and when he caresses her cheek again, it feels like a warm summer day's breeze. “Thank you.” he whispers, and presses a barely-there kiss to her forehead.

“Goodbye, Tony.” she whispers back.

“Goodbye, Pep. Love you.”

And then he is gone, truly gone this time, except for the sense of gentle warmth in the air surrounding her like an embrace. And maybe, she thinks, maybe he isn't the only one who found peace here today.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave me a comment? Pretty please? Comments are the light of my writer life!


End file.
